


dream of me to keep you safe

by myownremedy



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Femslash February, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 12:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6052183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer is waiting for her – Spencer is always waiting for her, is always there to hold her. Emily slips her hand into Spencer’s and remembers the way Spencer held her when Maya’s body was found, remembers all of the times Spencer has been willing to go to war for her, remembers all of the times Spencer has held Emily in her arms and tried to make Emily safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dream of me to keep you safe

**Author's Note:**

> some important viewing material: [[x].](http://marnz.tumblr.com/post/152527768379)  
> also, there is NO way in hell that the girls didn't show up for Emily's dad's funeral.  
> title from Only Love by Pvris.  
> unbeta'd and speed written, sorry about that.
> 
> edit (2/19/16): i accidentally left in a section that was supposed to be deleted in the editing process. it's gone now. sorry about that!

It’s actually Toby, not her mother, who calls to tell her. Emily will always circle back around to this memory because it doesn’t fit the scenario she’s prepared herself for since grade school.

 

*

 

Emily is just paying for her second latte of the day when her phone rings.

Making a face, she drops a dollar in the tip jar and then juggles her wallet and receipt so she can answer the phone. Her mom had called a few hours ago and Emily hadn’t answered, too absorbed in studying for her kinesiology final, which she is in fact still studying for.

But it’s not her mom, it’s Toby. Emily smiles at the cashier apologetically as she answers the call.

“Hey, Toby!” She says, going to stand at the counter in front of the espresso machine. She’s in the bagel shop on the first floor of the library; she’ll probably be here until she dies, because the alternatives is taking her kinesiology final and she is so not ready for that.

“Hi,” Toby says haltingly. He sounds distorted and there’s some sort of noise in the background, like screeching or wailing – like someone crying.

“Are you calling me from the station again?” Emily asks around a smile, nodding her thanks as the barista set her drink in front of her.

“No.” Toby says.

“Oh, sorry – there’s just this sound in the background, like someone’s crying.” Emily grabs her drink, winces, and wedges her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she fumbled to put a sleeve onto her cup.

“Emily,” Toby sighs. “I’m actually at your house, with your mom,” he pauses and then doesn’t continue. His breathing fills the line and everything fades away until the sound in the background sharpens. Emily recognizes it immediately.

 _“What?”_ she snaps, her heart in her throat, her world crashing down. It’s been two and a half years since A – since Charlotte? – had been locked up, and if she’s out or if she’s found some way to hurt Emily’s mom then Emily will find her and Emily will fucking kill her, will push her off a roof, Charlotte won’t even have to jump –

“Emily,” Toby says, so gently she knows something is horrifically wrong because the only other time Toby has been this gentle with her is when he was asking if she should have taken someone else to Junior Homecoming. “Emily, it’s your dad. He –”

She can’t hear him, can’t hear anything but a ringing in her ears and the _splat!_ her latte makes when she drops it and it explodes on the floor.

“Emily,” Toby is saying over and over when she tunes back in, on her knees trying to sop up the latte with the cheap paper napkins the bagel shop stocked. “Emily, Emily, Emily, are you there –”

 

*

 

Toby had apparently been moving the dining room table for her mother when the car pulled up. He had been in uniform, having come straight from work, and had been the last person to catch on to what was happening.

He had not known anything was wrong until Mrs. Fields had started crying as he was dragging the dining room table another half inch across the floor. He had stopped moving the table, had gone to her side and had seen what she had: three men in class A uniform walking up to the door, a fourth man waiting in the car.

“No,” Mrs. Fields had said over and over again as the men walked up the path, as they stood on the front step and rang the doorbell. “No, no, no,” she had whispered even as she moved to open the door.

When the chaplain had stepped forward and begun talking, Mrs. Fields had fainted and Toby had caught her just as the medic had rushed forward.

Toby had carried her, alone (the medic had offered to help and Toby had declined) to the couch, where the medic had looked her over.

The first thing she did when waking up was grab Toby’s arm and say “Emily” before breaking down in sobs again.

 

*

 

“– Emily, Emily, Emily, are you there?”

“Yes.” Emily croaks, standing and throwing the sodden napkins in the trashcan. “Yes, I’m here. Is – are the people from the army still there?”

Toby doesn’t ask how she knows. Later she will tell him she knows because she made her dad explain to her exactly what would happen if he died, that she has researched it enough to have all of the steps memorized.

“They are.” Toby says. “Would you like to talk to them?”

She says yes without meaning too and listens to the chaplain (reluctantly – he is advised against telling her on the phone, she knows) tell her the facts, the time of death and the location and the circumstances. She walks back to her table in the library and packs up her stuff and swears that _yes_ , she’s fine, and _yes_ , it’s okay to get off the phone, and _yes_ , she will be there with her mother to receive the casket.

She gets off the phone and goes straight to her kinesiology professor’s office, and when she explains the situation to him, he promises she can take the final after she gets back from break. Then he promises to strong-arm all of her other teachers into agreeing with him. Turns out her professor served in the army during the gulf war.

 

*

 

Hanna and Aria are having a sleep over, which Emily finds out when she calls Hanna on Skype.

She talks to them as she packs, momentarily losing it when she realizes the black dress she wore to testify at Charlotte’s trial is the only thing appropriate enough to wear to the funeral.

“Em,” Hanna says as Aria calls Spencer for what feels like the hundredth time. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want us to come to the funeral?”

“Yes.” Emily says, folding up the dress – she’ll have to iron it – and putting it into her duffle bag. She carries her laptop over to her dresser, sets it down and then rummages in her top drawer it for panty hose and underwear and bras.

“Spencer! Pick up your phone, it’s an emergency!” Emily hears Aria bark into her phone. Emily suppresses a wobbly smile. Everything is an emergency for Spencer; the way Toby talks about it, she’s impossible to get ahold of because of her various internships and other commitments.

“Wear the pearl studs.” Hanna says as Emily’s hands hover above her jewelry box.

“Dad –” Emily cuts herself off. _Dad gave those to me_ , she wants to say, but if she keeps talking she’s going to fall apart.

“I know.” Hanna says gently. “C’mon, Em. Focus. How many days are you going to be home?”

“Five or six.” Emily paws through her shirts, pulling a few out, then frowns down at her sweaters. She thinks she must have left the substantial ones in Rosewood – it’s December there but here it rarely dips below fifty degrees.

She can’t think.

“Earth to Emily!” Aria says, shouldering Hanna out of the way. “Em, we can come home really easily – I can take the train –”

“ _No.”_ Emily snaps. “I know it’s finals, okay? I don’t –” she pauses. “I need to do this, but I know how hard it is to go back. I don’t need you to come back to my sake.”

“It’s not a hardship.” Aria objects, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “For you we’ll do anything.”

“I know.” Emily says. “That’s why I don’t want you to come.”

“I get it.” Hanna says before Aria can reply. “We don’t want to make it harder for you. But we’re here for you, okay? Call us anytime.”

“Do you want to stay on skype while you pack?” Aria asks.

Emily shuts her eyes and wills the tears back. “Yeah.” She manages, voice scratching her throat. “Tell me what else I should wear.”

 

*

 

At the airport she thinks about calling Paige but doesn’t. Paige got out Rosewood to be safe and this – this messy, violent emotion that’s clawing it’s way out of Emily’s chest and up her throat – this isn’t safe.

 

*

 

Receiving the casket is – is –

Emily’s mom cries. Emily doesn’t.

 

*

 

People line the road for miles as they drive home, their car ahead of the hearse. Emily doesn’t know any of them. She gets that the military is a _thing_ , gets that it bonds everyone who has ever served or has a family member that served but she hasn’t fully appreciated what that means until now. These people didn’t know her dad but they didn’t have too.

It still drives her up the wall because they should have known him; everyone should know exactly how good and strong and gentle he was; these people should be lining the streets for someone else.

Someone else.

She wants to cry then but she doesn’t because she knows if she does then she’ll never stop. So she shuts her eyes and pretends these people have turned out to honor someone else and she’s just stuck in traffic.

 

*

 

Toby is waiting when they get home. Emily doesn’t quite run into his arms but it’s a closely fought battle. She buries her face in his chest and breathes in his familiar smell and focuses on not falling apart.

“Hey,” he murmurs into her hair. “Hey, hey, you’re okay, I’ve got you.”

The moms are all there, Mrs. Marin and Mrs. Hastings and Mrs. Montgomery, and they bear Emily’s mom into the living room and sit with her on the couch, Mrs. Marin wrapping an arm around Emily’s mom.

“Let’s go to my room.” Emily rasps, voice and heart lodged in her throat.

“Okay.” Toby says.

They sit on her bed and Toby, when requested, chatters inanely about work and how he and Spencer are just friends now, and how he and Caleb went fishing and are getting into microbrews and how Lorenzo and Alison are broken up for good.

“I don’t want to see her.” Emily interrupts, hands twisting together in her lap. “I don’t – I can’t –”

“Don’t worry.” Toby says, menace flavoring his words. Emily remembers, belatedly, that Toby went to juvie, that he was on the A Team, that he’s a cop. He’s always been her friend first and questionable second but sometimes it leaps out at her. “Don’t worry,” he says again, “I’ll be sure to let her know.”  
“Thank you.”

“When’s the funeral?” Toby asks very gently and Emily shuts her eyes again. One day she’s going to explode the way an IED does, heart and ribs and tears flying in every direction.

“The day after tomorrow. It was going to be tomorrow but his side of the family couldn’t get flights from the Philippines in time, so they’re flying in tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.” Toby promises.

 

*

 

Her dad is – oh god, _was_ – a colonel, which means his flag draped casket is transported from the church to the graveyard by a horse drawn caisson, its wooden wheels creaking ominously.

A riderless horse follows, a pair of empty boots turned backwards in the stirrups. The horse’s hoof beats echo in the silence, hollow like Emily’s heart.

She and her mom follow, her dad’s side of the family behind them, the rest of the funeral party bringing up the rear. Emily has lost track of who is here and who isn’t. All she can focus on is the brightness of the flag on the casket and the sound of hoof beats. She wishes her dad was here and that this was a funeral for one of his military buddies; she’d personally kill all of them in order to bring her dad back. She’s selfish, she knows.

She wants the funeral to be a blur but instead it is achingly long. She watches the pallbearers carry the casket; she watches them put it on the stand. She wants to fidget, to move, to run – to the casket or from this reality, she’s not sure – and just as she shifts on her feet a cool hand slips into hers.

Emily doesn’t need to look around to know the hand is Spencer’s; she can smell Spencer’s coconut shampoo and her jasmine perfume and she recognizes Spencer’s touch instinctively, knows the feel of her skin and the shape of her callouses.

And _of course_ Spencer is here, in defiance of Emily’s express request, not that they ever managed to discuss it. She and Spencer have been playing phone tag for the past three days, Spencer leaving her heartfelt messages, Emily ordering her to stay in DC before breathing into the phone and doing her best not to cry.

“Ssh,” Spencer says now, clasping Emily’s hand. “Ssh.”

The pallbearers lift the flag up off of the casket and Emily jerks because she knows what’s going to happen and she needs to make it stop, needs to see her dad one more time – surely if she throws open the casket lid he’ll climb out, hale and whole; surely he’ll sling an arm over her shoulders and _ask why are you crying, what’s wrong?_ and she won’t even have to explain –

 

She yanks her hand out of Spencer and walks over to the casket, breaking protocol, tradition, all of it –

“No.” she’s crying, unable to choke it back any longer, grief squeezing her heart until it bursts. “I just – I have too –”

She knows she shouldn’t look – her dad had expressly told her not to look.

“Don’t look.” He had said when they had talked about this. She remembers this as if from far away, remembers how calm and rational he had been about it. “IEDs kill more soldiers than anything else in Iraq and Afghanistan, so if I die because of one, don’t look.”

But she wants to look now, she _needs_ to now, even if it’s just gore. Her hands scrabble on the casket’s lid as the pallbearers watch her with alarm, trying to figure out what she’s trying to do. They can’t release the flag so they can’t move to stop her but they can’t let her see –

Spencer is there, warm at Emily’s back, grabbing her wrists and pulling her away from the casket. She probably knew what Emily was going to do as soon as Emily moved.

“No.” she says, voice both gentle and stern. A part of Emily imagines her face, her mouth shaping the word, the regal lift of her eyebrows. “No, Emily, you can’t.”

 _“Let me go!”_ Emily sobs, struggling against her, her heart beating as fast as birdwings. “I just –”

“I will let you go if you promise not to try and open the casket.” Spencer says, her breath hot against Emily’s neck.

“I promise.” Emily gasps, the word tearing out of her like bullets.

Spencer releases her and Emily staggers forward, draping herself over the casket the way her mom did when the casket was brought off of the plane; she pillows her head on it and cries.

“Sorry.” Spencer is saying to the pallbearers, who are still holding the flag. They’ve shifted awkwardly to accommodate Emily.

“Sorry.” Emily echoes her. “I just –”

“Take as long as you need, ma’am.” One of them instructs, his nod like a salute.

Emily can’t take as long as she needs because she needs forever. She needs her dad not to be dead; she needs to lay her head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Instead, she kisses the lid of the casket and forces herself to stand up again.

Spencer is waiting for her – Spencer is always waiting for her, is always there to hold her. Emily slips her hand into Spencer’s and remembers the way Spencer held her when Maya’s body was found, remembers all of the times Spencer has been willing to go to war for her, remembers all of the times Spencer has held Emily in her arms and tried to make Emily safe.

They walk back to the rest of the funeral party, Emily’s mom reaching for her immediately. Spencer doesn’t let go of her hand, even as the flag is folded, as the rifles fire, as the bugle plays.

The notes tremble in the air and all the air sweeps out of Emily’s lungs. She has no energy left to cry, to fight. The last notes of the bugle fade and Spencer squeezes her hand so tightly Emily’s bones creak.

Her mom has to let go of Emily’s to take the flag she’s presented with. She takes it carefully, gently, like one would hold a bomb.

And, burned into Emily’s memory forever, is the silent, final salute.

 

*

 

Emily escapes from the memorial reception as quickly as she can without being rude. Maybe ‘escape’ is the wrong word; maybe she makes a dignified retreat. Regardless, she goes to her bedroom and pulls down the blinds, slips out of her heels and lies down on the bed.

That’s how Spencer finds her. Spencer doesn’t scold or raise those perfectly arched eyebrows. Instead she gets into bed next to Emily, plastering herself to Emily’s back, their knees tucked together and Spencer’s arm draped over Emily’s back.

“You’re here.” Emily says, trying valiantly not to cry. She’s frozen with embarrassment over what she did at the funeral, all of the protocols she broke; she humiliated her family, her father –

But she knows he would understand, knows he wouldn’t have minded. He, like the gentle pallbearer, would have told her to take her time.

“If you really thought we were going to let you go through this alone, you have another thing coming.” Spencer manages to sound stern even when she’s speaking into Emily’s hair. “Aria and Hanna told me that you didn’t want us to come, and then we all agreed I should go anyway.” She sighs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to talk to you more; I had to go coerce my teachers into letting me take my finals early so I could come.”

“That’s one of the exact reasons I didn’t want you guys to come.” Emily blinks rapidly.

“Emily.” Spencer says, half sitting up and then leaning forward so she can kiss Emily’s cheek. Emily turns so she’s lying on her back, staring up at Spencer. She can make out the curve of Spencer’s nose and the gleam of her dark eyes. She can even make out the sweep of Spencer’s bangs. They’re new. Emily thinks she likes them.

Spencer bends down and kisses her on the mouth, a chaste peck that still manages to encompass miles of tenderness. “I’m not letting you do this alone.”

Emily cries.

It’s not the muffled half sobs from the funeral; it’s full on weeping, with wailing and snot and burning lungs. Spencer holds her anyway, runs a hand through Emily’s hair and rubs her back as Emily sort of collapses against her.

Emily cries herself out and slowly pulls herself back together, sobs dying down to gasps, mascara cried clean off.

“How many times have you had to do that?” She asks when she can breathe again.

“Too many.” Spencer brushes hair away from Emily’s face. “But I’ll never stop.”

Emily leans forward and kisses her, wanting to see what it feels like now that she’s not a roiling mass of tears. It feels normal, like they’ve been doing this for as long as they’ve been friends; it feels familiar. Spencer is familiar, all of her, golden brown skin and bony elbows and quirked mouth. It’s dark in Emily’s room but Emily doesn’t have to see Spencer to know what her face is doing or where her limbs are.

She doesn’t know when Spencer became an extension of her body. It feels like it’s always been this way.

“Oh.” Emily breathes when they part, and immediately leans forward to kiss Spencer again. She feels Spencer smile against her lips and then pull away.

“Let’s do this later.” Spencer says. “I just –” _don’t want you to think this is because of what happened_.

“Yeah.” Emily nods.

“C’mon.” Spencer stands, smoothing her skirt, and holds a hand out to Emily. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

 

*

 

Spencer has to leave the next day to go back to Georgetown. Emily gets up early to see her off, bundled up against the winter chill. Spencer wraps her arms around Emily and they rock back and forth gently, Emily inhaling deeply as Spencer rubs her back.

“Skype me?” Spencer murmurs into her hair. “I miss you all the time.”

“Yeah.” Emily whispers inanely, trying _again_ not to fall apart. She’s grieved before, she knows the steps, but she’s ready to stop fucking doing it, and Spencer leaving is like salt on a wound.

“If I could stay,” Spencer begins, like she’s reading Emily’s mind. “I would. This is the last thing I want to do.”

“No, I know,” Emily assures her, drawing back so she can look Spencer in the face. “I know you don’t want to go.”

Spencer steps forward to hug her again.

“We’re never truly apart.” She whispers and Emily swallows.

“No,” Emily agrees, inhaling the smell of Spencer’s shampoo and perfume. “We’re not.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> [visit me on tumblr!](http://marnz.tumblr.com/) prompts welcome.


End file.
